henribey

I've just recently seen this film at the Montreal World Film Festival and I was truly fascinated by it. The premise is a bit preposterous: A Norwegian film director (played by the movie's actual director) has to make a film or else forfeit a subsidy he received for the purpose of making a movie (if only these things happened in real life!). In London, he attends almost unwillingly a performance - in English - of a lesser-known Ibsen play, The Lady of the Sea, which, on a whim, he then decides to film in Norway, with the British cast. The filming occurs in a remote northern part of Norway, in summer, when the sun shines practically 24 hours a day. As moviegoers, we're constantly shifting between scenes of the actual Ibsen play and lighthearted scenes when the Norwegian film director, the British play director, the film crew and the cast interact among each other. But there comes a point where the distinction between the two settings is completely blurred.

I had never heard of this play by Henryk Ibsen and was thoroughly pleased at the opportunity to learn about it. I was also immensely impressed by the acting, particularly that of the English actors, who certainly deserve to be much better known. Finally, I think the Norwegian setting is truly spectacular. This is an intelligent and cultivated bit of movie-making. Well done!

A play on words (check-mate, sex-mad, get it?), the title Sessomatto is quite accurate since most of the sketches in the movie are about sex gone berserk. I'm writing this in 2002, some 28 years after seeing the movie, so memory may fail me, but, even though this was supposed to be a vehicle for Giancarlo Giannini, I remember it mostly for the radiant beauty of Laura Antonelli. Some of the sketches definitely had some socially redeeming value and are harbingers of Dino Risi's future masterpieces (Profumo di donna, Primo Amore and, particularly, I Nuovi Mostri).